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Protests. At Reeb's death, telegraph wires burned across the country with expressions of outrage. The A.F.L.C.I.O. was "appalled." The American Jewish Committee protested the "shameful exhibition of brutality." The United Steelworkers Union wired Governor Wallace, accusing him and his "storm troopers" of cold violence.
North Dakota's Democratic Governor William Guy sent Wallace a telegram criticizing the "white conscience" of Alabama. Pianist Byron Janis protested by canceling a scheduled concert recital in Mobile. In city after city, civil rights groups mounted protest demonstrations. In Selma, the Negroes stood in nightlong vigils under the wary eyes of police. Selma's Negroes and a growing number of white ministers—and even several white Roman Catholic nuns from St. Louis—demonstrated, but they were kept in check, without resort to passion or clubs, by Public Safety Director Baker.
In Washington Congressmen from all sections of the nation expressed their anger, though only one Southerner did so publicly. "I abhor this brutality," cried Texas Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough. "Shame on you, George Wallace, for the wet ropes that bruised the muscles, for the bullwhips that cut the flesh, for the clubs that broke the bones, for the tear gas that blinded, burned and choked into insensibility!"
Concerned. The protests flowed like molten lava to Washington. To his dismay, Nicholas Katzenbach found a troop of twelve Negro and white demonstrators parked in the corridor near his office, demanding that he send federal troops to Alabama. Katzenbach talked with them, tried to explain how the Federal Government works through the courts. He got nowhere, permitted the sit-ins to remain till closing time, then had them evicted.
President Johnson was also besieged by calls, telegrams, visiting delegations —and, at one point, by a group of twelve civil rights protesters, who started on a regular White House tour, then plopped down in a ground-floor corridor and refused to budge. At the time, Johnson was playing host to a delegation of Negro newspaper editors. He was, said one editor later, "concerned, perturbed, and frustrated."
The President asked the editors' advice. J. S. Nathaniel Tross, publisher of the Charlotte, N.C., Post, suggested that Lyndon was "obliged to maintain the dignity, prestige and regnancy of the presidency." By no means, added Tross, should the President "prostitute his dignity" to discuss matters personally with the sit-ins. That was all Lyndon wanted to hear. Shortly thereafter, White House guards hauled the sit-ins off to jail. Orders from Johnson followed instantly: from now on, any such demonstrators were to be tossed out without any ado.
Try Harder. In Montgomery, lawyers met in Judge Johnson's courtroom to thresh out the claims and counter claims that had beclouded the week. Hosea Williams testified that on Sunday he had heard Sheriff Clark shouting to his deputies: "Go get them niggers—go get them goddam niggers!" Questioned closely about the charges that bullwhips were used, Williams said that he saw five